Offense is lone bright spot for Edsall’s squad
A day after UConn’s 62-50 loss to SMU, coach Randy Edsall was happy with about half of the Huskies’ performance.
“We did enough to win the game offensively,” Edsall said Sunday. “If we play like that every game offensively, we’d win a lot of games. You wouldn’t lose many games.”
And as for the other half?
“Defensively, we didn’t do enough to even help ourselves win the game,” he said. “Until we stop giving up all these big plays, yeah we competed, but you can’t win games giving up 62 points.”
UConn (1-9, 0-5 in conference play) put up 583 yards and seven touchdowns against SMU but gave up 594 yards and eight touchdowns in the loss. As has been the case throughout a frustrating season, the Huskies fell victim to big plays, allowing eight gains of at least 25 yards and five of at least 40 yards.
Edsall said “little fundamental things” doomed the Huskies on those plays.
On SMU’s 56-yard firstquarter touchdown pass up the middle, Edsall said, a defender didn’t “keep his eye on his progression” when he should have.
On another play, a UConn player turned his eyes to the quarterback when he was supposed to track the player he was guarding.
On each big gain, Edsall said, “one or two guys” simply failed to execute.
Edsall also called out UConn’s special-teams units, which were responsible for several poor plays against the Mustangs. The Huskies missed two field goal tries, had an extrapoint attempt blocked (due to a low kick), jumped offside on an onside kick (for the second time this year) and, perhaps most pivotally, were called offside on an SMU field-goal attempt. That kick was wide, but the UConn penalty gave the Mustangs a fourth-and-1 chance, which they converted on their way to a key touch- down.
“There’s no excuse for it,” Edsall said of the mistakes.
Edsall was asked Sunday whether he took any solace in the fact UConn managed to hang around for most of the game with an SMU team that remains alive for the AAC West Division title. His answer: There’s a whole lot of room to grow.
“We’ve got to get more physical on defense. We’ve got to be better tacklers. We’ve got to do a better job of doing our assignments and being confident that we can do that,” Edsall said. “And once we do that and our offense keeps doing those things and we take more advantage of our opportunities from a special teams standpoint, then we’ll be able to beat those teams. But until we do that, we’re not going to be able to beat them.”
UConn has two games remaining. The Huskies will head to Greenville, N.C., next weekend for a game against East Carolina before closing at home Nov. 24 against Temple.